


Blackberry Wine

by spacehart



Series: The Velaris Series [1]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Gen, actual city planning, city zoning is NOT fun, crossposted on tumblr, extremely vague mythology references, i'm serious i'm doing all the heavy lifting here, ratings and tags subject to change, real worldbuilding, sjm give me a detailed map of the night court and i'll be happy, your faves only show up briefly sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-07-28 06:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehart/pseuds/spacehart
Summary: "Anyone flying or traveling near Velaris would see nothing but barren rock, and if they tried to walk through it, they'd find themselves suddenly deciding otherwise."Velaris has always been a hidden city, with millennia-old walls keeping out those who might wish it harm. But for fifty years, the walls of Velaris also kept its people in. If Maqvali, a stray and a merchant, could put trust in these people, nobility or not, she could put trust in its uncertain future.





	1. One

Light began to slowly creep in through Maqvali’s eastern-facing window. She breathed deeply, heavily, as waking dreamers do when they were dragged from sleep. Velaris was steeped in blue rolling over to pinks and yellows, softened by the spring clouds.

Maqvali cracked open an obsidian-black eye. She lay in her bed for heartbeats and moments longer than she should have, simply watching the scene from her window. Her bed was warm, the floor was cold, and her starry city was still quiet. No night birds sang, no morning larks had woken. The loudest of sounds filtering into Maqvali’s tiny attic apartment was the steady rush of the river Sidra, flowing beneath her to the sea.

Maqvali rolled over, trying to stretch away the ever-present ache in her shoulder blades. Sitting up, rolling her shoulders, she squinted into the oncoming day. There were some days where she loathed rising as early as routine demanded— but that was routine, and she had work to do.

For the first time in months, she didn’t bother with her slippers that morning. Winter was finally starting to thaw, spring eager on its heels to arrive. The floor was still cold, and the water in her pitcher and basin was icy as she splashed her face. Maqvali dunked her face in the basin for a few seconds, letting the cold water wake her. Routine then dictated she scrub her teeth with mint and salt, then sit at the edge of her bed in front of the small mirror, still wrapped in her blanket. Maqvali’s magic was little, and it was not the kind of magic that could keep a home warm.

She held her comb between her lips as she stared at herself in the mirror and used her long nails to pick out sections of hair for braiding. The light showed threads of deep gold and bloody red running through her strands, but in any other light, it was jet-black and thick. She twisted lengths of it, braided others, the same way her sister did when Maqvali was young. Sturdy, simple wooden hairpins kept the elaborate bun in place at the nape of her neck.

A shiver ran through her spine again. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking, though she had been warm for some time now. She felt jittery, a sort of fine shaking in the marrow of her shoulders, her ribs.

No morning tea today then, even though she knew her downstairs neighbour would offer her some on her way out. He always seemed to catch her as she crossed his front door. She didn’t think the extra energy it would give her was a good idea.

She stood suddenly then, biting back a curse as she saw the sky. The faintest breath of starry blue was the last of its kind on the horizon, being chased away by riotous yellows and cheery sky blue.

Late as she was, she took extra care to knot tightly the laces of her tunic, to give an extra tug to her belt, pleating and pinning her short cloak at her shoulders. No need for a scarf today.

The final touches were the silvery steel she wore: steel hoops she threaded through her ears, three to each lobe. She slid on her Palace rings, one to each thumb. She twisted them to show the crests embossed on each ring, proud markers of her credibility and reputation within the Palaces’ market squares. She took a moment to preen over them as she did every morning; so long as she had these rings, she was welcome and honoured among the merchants of Velaris, scavenger or not. She had earned her place here.

She wore no jewels, but the wire-wrapped stone on a long cord necklace might have been an unpolished ruby or a bright garnet from afar. Maqvali carefully tucked it under her tunic, next to her skin, the cord going under her collar. All traces of the necklace vanished.

There was a reason Maqvali kept it next to her skin. It was a precious thing, a stolen thing. She should have been rid of it years ago; buried it among the high cliffs of Velaris or pitched it into the Sidra. But it was her destruction and her salvation. Her inheritance and her weapon. 

She hadn’t run the Blood Rite, hadn’t scaled the sacred Mount Ramiel like her brothers. Maybe she’d earned it, maybe not.

It was still hers, utterly hers. Her Siphon, her secret.

It was usually a comforting weight against her breastbone, tapping against her body with the rhythm of her step. It usually calmed her nerves, having it so near her.

The thing that was shaking, trembling in fear was still there, taking refuge in her ribcage, under her collarbones, beneath her scars.

Maqvali drew in a breath through her nose and stuck an extra knife in her boot.

Slinging on her bag, packed the night before, she leaned over her bed and shut the window. Rays of morning sun chased her footsteps out the door.

* * *

Despite her late start, she made good time. As one of the city’s smaller merchants, she made her living with herbs, dried and fresh, through all seasons. With Spring coming, she was looking forward to sinking her fingers knuckle-deep into the loam, spending nights in the wooded lands surrounding Velaris. 

Her trade was with fresh things, and as she made her rounds that morning to her usual patrons, she told them there was a promise of new herbs and greens coming. Springtime in Velaris was kind, had been so for as far back as Maqvali could remember. 

One patron, a female called Sureya who ran an apothecary with her family, belly slowly rounding with child, sighed wistfully. “Thank the Mother. I’ve had a damned craving for fiddleheads and violets, and those don’t grow in the greenhouses.”

“I don’t reckon violets are set to bloom now, but soon— maybe a week or so?” Maqvali mused. “Fiddleheads, though… If I find any today, I’ll bring some around before it gets too late.” 

Sureya sighed, leaning against her doorframe. “Fiddleheads...fried with garlic and red peppers. You know, my neighbour says if I’m craving spicy food, it’ll be a girl?”

Maqvali hummed politely; she knew the saying. “So I’ve heard.”

“Oh!” The apothecary said. “Didn’t I owe you from last week’s mint delivery?”

Maqvali paused. “It’s not that much of a difference—”

“No, no,” Sureya insisted. “Stay put. One of our customers finally settled his tab yesterday.”

As soon as she disappeared into her storefront, Sureya reappeared. Maqvali tapped the toe of one boot on the cobblestones, feeling a bit awkward. The money owing didn’t really matter; Sureya and her family were good customers, and they often passed her a sweet bun with nuts folded in. 

So today, Maqvali accepted the bundle of coins and a bun, thanking Sureya and renewing her promise of fiddleheads, if any were retrieved.

* * *

The rest of the morning passed in a similar, familiar fashion. She made deliveries up and down the city quarters to cafés and healers and bakers, gasping at the rare saffron threads one of her patrons showed off proudly. She made her way through the Palace of Hoof and Leaf, taking orders from vendors to find spring greens and flowers and trimmings of new plants. She scribbled them all down, and when the page was full, she departed for the city limits.

Among the tradesfolk who traded with other territories and kingdoms, Maqvali was one of the rarer merchants whose stock came exclusively from within Velaris’s borders. Mornings were for deliveries, and the rest of the day was for scavenging.

Despite the full sun overhead, the woods in the foothills were still cool and dark. Maqvali, though, had spent her entire life hunting for small bounties, bringing home a harvest. 

To her pleasure, she did find fiddleheads for Sureya. She scalped moss from a stone and wrapped them up, adding them to the bag strapped to her bag.

The rest of the day passed quietly, full of hard work and dirty hands. By the time Maqvali had rinsed her face and hands in a babbling brook, the sun was low and what shadows collected on the forest floor were long. She began to lope back to the city limits.

Maqvali was one foot inside the city, bootheel just beginning to strike the cobblestones, when a rumble and a blast knocked her to her knees. She fell hard, skimming her palms. She tasted blood.

All throughout Velaris, the city shook, down to the riverbed.

An eerie, terrible quiet fell. 

Not from within the city— shouts and cries echoed, the streets now full of people driven from their homes to see what was going on.

But the world from without had gone quiet.

Her ears were still ringing. She couldn’t tell if Velaris was still shaking, or if it was just her. Someone raced past her into the city. Someone grasped her arm and helped her up.

Still, she struggled to catch her breath. Maqvali looked at the hand on her arm. She could find no voice to speak, no breath to give to all her sudden questions. What had just happened?

The guard shook his horned head, letting her arm go. He didn’t know either.

The two of them stood there, with others stumbling up and clinging to each other. Maqvali cast her eyes over the city, now frantic. The streets were ever more crowded, people looking to the evening sky and seeing no answers. To the west, she could see two winged figures soaring towards the red cliffs of the House of Wind.

The sight of the two Illyrians had Maqvali gritting her teeth. 

“The Palaces—” she had to swallow past the knot in her throat. “The Palace governors. They’ll know what’s happening.” Maqvali’s voice hadn't wobbled like that in a long time, but as her feet carried her downhill towards the Palace of Hoof and Leaf, she found she didn’t care.

* * *

The ring on her right thumb got her past the guards and into the Governor’s council chambers. The room was already crowded with other merchants and vendors. She immediately pushed herself against the doorframe as a female stormed past, a tempest of red and gold exiting the hall. 

The High Lord’s Third-In-Command. The Morrigan.

Though it was only a glimpse of the female, the knots in Maqvali’s gut tightened and twisted. It truly was that bad then. Maqvali watched her go, watched the crowd part around her and reform in her wake.

But they didn’t reform quickly enough. Maqvali was tall but narrow enough that she could slip through the crowd in the wake of the Morrigan, now gone. 

The Governor, on the other hand, was still staring after the female. His face was a stark contrast to her expression. Where the Morrigan had seemed agonized and angry and wild-eyed, the Governor was a male of a blank and stony countenance. 

The council room and the hallway beyond were now hushed, silent. Waiting. Vendors and merchants, high fae and lesser; all were staring.

“...Governor?” came a voice. Maqvali didn’t see who it had come from, but it broke her trance. Now she stood in front of the male, caution written clearly on her face.

“Governor Heilyn?” she tried. “Sir? What’s going on? What’s happening?”


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Velaris could never be a prison. It was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy the mild case of feels!  
Next update will also be a bit shorter, and in about two weeks— that's because I'm working on the next installment of the Velaris Series! As always, kudos are appreciated and comments are adored.

Maqvali was one of the first to leave the Governor’s Palace and trickle out onto the streets.  
She tried to keep her head down, tried to walk quickly home, but there were too many fae out on the streets.

This time yesterday, and any other day, there would be fae at home with their families, our out at dinner. Some of the nocturnal folk would have just been waking.

Here, now, as the last of the sun was swallowed by the horizon, all of Velaris had emptied out of their homes. Maqvali saw furrowed brows and thrashing tails, neighbour reaching out to neighbour, all asking the same thing.

What had happened? Just now, with that mighty wave of power washing over the city?

As she stumbled through the streets, she heard herself answering the same thing, over and over again.

“Velaris is under lockdown— the High Lord is gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean gone?”

Someone tried to catch her arm, someone tugged on her sleeve. She shook them off and kept moving, too shaken to stop, just driven by the need to keep _going-going-going._

It felt like weeks, months ago that Maqvali had set foot in the council room, though it couldn’t have been more than an hour ago. It was hard to tell.

Someone was calling her name. It was a voice she recognized, a voice that reminded her… of fiddleheads.

Sureya.

When she finally stopped, Maqvali was panting.

“Maqvali—” Sureya again— “Maqvali, what’s going on?”

Maqvali shivered at the pitch of Sureya’s voice. She turned slowly, forcing her feet to move. Sureya clutched her open door, one hand over her belly.

“Maqvali?” Sureya’s voice was quiet, waiting for Maqvali to speak.

It was heartbeats before Maqvali flatly said, “The High Lord— he’s gone. We’re under lockdown. No one in, no one out.”

Before Sureya could ask again, Maqvali shook her head. “That’s all I know.” A pause. “Oh— but I did find fiddleheads today,” she said, voice now wobbling.

Sureya was still staring at her, bracing herself against the doorframe now. Maqvali shuffled her pack off her back, cringing away from the way it brushed her shoulderblades. She rifled through it silently, looking for the folds of moss that swaddled the fiddleheads. Finding it, she held the package out to the apothecary.

Sureya took it silently, blinking at her. Fiddleheads were so small compared to this news.

Pack still dangling from her hands, Maqvali turned to go, not hearing Sureya bid her goodnight and thanks. She moved silently towards home.

* * *

Maqvali perched on the end of her bed in front of her vanity, eyes glassy, comb in hand. She felt too angular, too frantic, yet locked underneath her copper skin.  
She had wanted to take out the pins in her hair, massage her scalp and braid away her black waves for sleep. But she had sat on the bed and…hadn’t.

Abandoning her comb, Maqvali crawled over her bed and cracked the window open. She needed to hear the rush of the Sidra beneath her. The night air was frigid, but Maqvali was raised on broad, open plains with screaming winter windstorms tearing apart anything flimsier than a wooden cabin. She had been born during the beginning of the windstorm season, an unexpected final child to the three brothers and an elder sister, and the smallest of the five.

And despite how small she was, she had made it through the winter. She had made it through worse. So this chill, rolling off the Sidra, was nothing to her.

Maqvali looked over her city, watching lights flicker in the streets and over the water. It felt different, oceans away, though she could see that the bones of Velaris were still the same. Still the wide marble bridges over the Sidra, still the scent of salt and hothouse lemons, new grass beginning to grow after the last of the winter melted into an early spring.

Velaris was her home, had been so for the past century. She was still young, though she had spent the majority of her life between the mountains and the sea here. Whether it was dead leaves and undergrowth or cobblestones and street dust beneath her feet, she knew she was in Velaris. She could walk some parts of the city blindfolded. She had trusted it, chosen it as her home, fallen deeper in love with it day by day until she knew her soul was rooted deep into the bedrock.

But now, with the echo of No one comes in, no one goes out ringing in her ears, she had to wonder: was it now her prison?

Maqvali shut her weary eyes tight as they began to water. A shiver wracked her spine, her ribs, old bones long forgotten. Her head dropped miserably.

Velaris… it had always been safe, its people honest. It had taken her years to return any of that faith, even to the degree she held today. Maqvali knew she could trust in that— in her people. The High Lord’s Inner Circle had told them everything they knew. Maqvali could have a little faith in that.

She exhaled, looking up again. The stars were blurry through her tears.  
If she could put trust in these people, nobility or not, she could put trust in its uncertain future, she decided. That was final.

Velaris, then…Velaris could never be a prison. It was home.

She sat back on her bed, window still open. Maqvali reached with one hand for the comb and with the other, began to tug at the pins and combs at her nape.


	3. Interlude

_She crawled on her belly through the undergrowth, spitting out leaves and fog as she went._

_ She had to keep going, had to go south and west, had to…_

_ Had to…_

_ She owed it to them._

_ To who?_

_ She had to keep going. Helle squirmed further into the underbrush, keeping low, far, far away from waking. Sharp eyes watched her, dark eyes, angry eyes, eyes of sorrow and empty eyes— none as dark as her own._

_ She heard howls, cackling laughter at the edge of hearing. Wild eyes, whites showing, glinted somewhere above her, behind her. Helle never saw them, but kept going, fear telling her that the beasts were after her, savage claws and bone-shredding teeth, bellies empty._

_ They could smell her blood._

_ Something tangled at her legs, and she cried out, terror getting the best of her. Something tangled in her hair. Tugged on it, gently, then as she kept moving, vengefully ripped strands out by the roots._

...such beautiful hair…

_ Helle couldn’t breathe; the air around her had turned to ice. She was no longer in the underbrush, coated in wailing memories and mud. Now she was underwater, submerged in an icy river, a river of forgetfulness…_

...you’ve earned it…

...sit still!...

Woe, woe, woe_ wheezed a thin, hollow voice. Helle was still drowning, swept away in the rage of an icy river, surface almost frozen over._

_ She had to get out, had to get out. Her back was burning, her lungs were raw._

_ Helle hit the riverbed hard, flat cold stone and roots tangling around her clothes, her hair, her…_

_ The world went silent, like a town after a snowfall, like a forest cradling a predator, like a girl drowning in a winter-cold river._

In a city, in a bed, in front of an open window, Maqvali hauled in desperate, tearful lungfuls of air. Sweet spring air, down into her lungs, then back up again. 

She gasped and gasped, Velaris night air in, torrents of nightmares out.

Maqvali was near to shrieking, clawing at her back, at the ridges and bumps she found there, the snarls of scars holding her in the grip of nightmares.

Maqvali pulled her knees to her chest, anchoring her icy hands there, mouth opened in a silent scream. Tears hot enough to scald rolled down her face as she gasped and gasped.

This air did not burn. This air was soft with the smell of gritty salt from the sea, the tang of lemons and magic wafting through the open window.

The floor where she lay, and the rest of the apartment, was blue in the moonlight. Maqvali slowly counted the plants on the drying rack, twitched her fingers over the worn-smooth knots in the wooden floorboards. One by one, her gasps turned to pants turned to slow, heavy, exhausted breathing.

Not even caring that she laid on the—

_—riverbed—_

—floor, Maqvali reached for her blanket, dragging it down from the bed and tucking it around her shoulders. She rolled onto her side, pillowing her head on her arm, and curled into herself.

Her lungs ached, her back burned, her throat felt raw and her eyes swollen. Though her head pounded, Maqvali sent up a small prayer to whatever star or god or being that guarded the gates of restful sleep, begging them to admit her.

Maqvali did not have the kind of pride that stopped her from begging, but that was her last thought as she slipped into a warm, quiet darkness, and did not wake for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to the beginning of the Velaris Series, a project I've been sitting on for a while now. Blackberry Wine will be a bit longer than the rest of the series, but in the meantime, I'll still be writing and posting the shorter stories!  
Kudos are lovely, but comments make my day— any feedback or words of appreciation would send me over the moon.  
If you want to chat, come find me on Tumblr @goblinmrkt, I'd love to hear from you! Blackberry Wine is crossposted there.   
Thanks to Rose, Adrian, and Matt for beta'ing! And thank you for reading!


End file.
